296 MYMEMOIRS
land was only engaged in making us give one-sided concessions in the construction of our fleet without receiving anything in return. The Foreign Office could not expect to complete this one-sided subjection, and now urged me to drop all the three supplementary ships. This demand was equal to the abandonment of the whole of the Supplementary Estimates, for we could not then ask for the personnel, since the whole justification of these Estimates became illogical once the ships were dropped. The Foreign Office did not take into account that apart from the weakness incurred militarily by the stoppage of this reform, and especially after the Emperor had come to an agreement with Lord Haldane, the result was an unwarrantable loss of prestige, and that we had started down a slope on which there was no stopping. The further history of the sufferings of the Supplementary Bill, which cannot be related here in detail, showed that our diplomacy allowed itself to be brought more and more to the standpoint that England really had the right to determine the limits of our armament. The Emperor's firmness finally suppressed any suggestion that the Supplementary Bill, which had been solemnly announced in a speech from the Throne, should be dropped without any concessions on the part of the English. The Chancellor must have felt, in view of the course which this affair had taken, that our representative in London was not equal to his task, for our ambassador there was relieved by the best diplomatist we possessed, Freiherr von Marschall.